That split-level job last month almost cost me my back

I took a house in Beaverton with a wonky split-level landing, figured I could just adjust the stringers on site. By the third riser I was 3/8" off and had to recut the whole set on a Saturday. Anyone else run into trouble trusting old measurements on remodel stairs?

3 comments

3 Comments

irismartinez13d ago

Did you check if the original framing was even square to begin with, or just run with what the old stringers told you? Sometimes those old splits settle so bad the whole landing is off level by an inch.

blake69112d ago

Respectfully, I gotta push back a little on this one. Checking the landing for level is a solid idea in theory, but in practice a lot of those old landings are so far out of whack that trying to fix them opens up a whole new can of worms. Your mileage may vary, but in my experience once you start shimming or planing to correct an inch of drop you're basically rebuilding the whole framing from scratch. I've seen guys chase a square line for hours only to realize the entire house settled that way decades ago and everything else is built to match. Sometimes the old stringers might have worked with what they had, and the last thing you want is to fight the whole structure just to get a perfect level. Take this with a grain of salt, but my gut says if the old deck was standing solid for 20 years, it might be smarter to just match it than to try and fix what ain't really broke.

adamgreen13d ago

Did you actually put a level on the landing before you started, or just assume it was good because it looked flat from the ground? That inch could throw off everything downstream.